The present invention relates generally to automatic identification of railcars and more specifically, to the automatic identification of railcars equipped with electro-pneumatic brakes.
With the addition of electro-pneumatically operated train brakes to railway freight cars comes a need to be able to automatically identify the types, weights, and braking ratios of the individual cars in the train. Present systems address this by requiring that the serial numbers of the cars and other car related information be manually entered into a data file in the locomotive controller. While this does provide the information necessary to properly identify each car in the train, it is very time consuming when dealing with long trains (for example, 100 cars or more), and must be manually updated every time the train make-up changes (i.e., when cars are dropped off or picked up). Also, manually entering data increases the chance of errors. Manually entering data of the light weight, gross rail weight or braking ratios would be even more cumbersome, so this information is currently not being entered or captured.
The presently configured electro-pneumatically operated train brakes includes a communication network with a node at each car. This provides an appropriate network to communicate the desired information from the car to the locomotive controller. Since the brake valve, brake equipment or the electro-pneumatic communication node controller may be changed on the cars, there must be a means to provide the information which is a permanent part of the car.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to alleviate the need for manually entering car specific data.
Another object of the present invention is to automatically identify each car and its associated light weight, gross rail weight, braking ratio and other pertinent information.
It is still an even further object of the present invention to provide this information permanently on the car so as not to be affected by repair or change of brake equipment on the car.
An even further object of the present invention to provide an automatic identification of the railcars which is compatible or integral with other reporting systems on the car.
These and other objects are achieved by providing a storage device mounted on the car, including the car identification data. A reading device is connected to the local communication node which communicates with the locomotive and a network for reading the identification data stored in the storage device. The local communication node then communicates the read identification data to the controller at the locomotive. The identification data includes at least the serial number, brake ratio, light weight and gross rail weight of the car. The storage device is permanently mounted on the car. The storage device may be mounted on the pipe bracket of the electrically controlled pneumatic valve or may be attached to a junction box which connects the electric trainline to the local communication node. Preferably, the storage device and the reading device are a subsidiary communication node controlled by the local communication node and activated by the local communication node when it requires the information.
The storage device may be a passive electronic transponder and the reading device sends a signal to the passive device to read the identification data. As another alternative, the storage device may be electrically connected to the local controller or the subsidiary communication node where the subsidiary communication node is at the junction box. Where the storage device is mounted on, the pipe bracket, for example, the communication node is mounted adjacent to the storage device to directly access the identification data. The storage device may have a housing which includes surface terminals and the local communication node engages these surface terminals directly. Thus, additional wiring and connections are avoided. The passive transponder reading of the information may also result from mounting the local communication node adjacent to the permanently mounted storage device.
Where the subsidiary node is at the junction box, an electrical cable connection is made between the subsidiary communication node and the local communication node. Also, a current sensor is provided as part of the subsidiary node. The sensed current can be sensed by the subsidiary node or stored in the storage device. This information can then be transmitted to the local communication node and subsequently to the controller. This sensed current can be used in train serialization routines or other uses.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.